Question

How did the English start colonies with distinct qualities in North America?

Answer 1

English people came to North America for a wide variety of reasons. A number of British-American colonies were strictly commercial, economic ventures. In particular, Britain's Caribbean colonies (which some people consider to be North American colonies), like Jamaica and Barbados, became massively profitable colonies due to their use of slave labor in producing sugar and other valuable commodities.

Britain's colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas were similar. At the outset, many of these colonists were looking to find gold, but as time went on they transformed into plantation colonies growing things like indigo (a kind of dye), rice, cotton, and especially tobacco. In fact, the production of tobacco in Virginia and the Carolinas remains profitable even today, and has certainly changed cultures around the world.

But other colonies weren't set up for financial profit, but to create new kinds of spiritual communities. Most famously, the Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay colony so that they could practice their variety of Calvinism with a new degree of freedom. Other colonies, like Rhode Island, were set up by religious radicals who were kicked out of Massachusetts Bay. And Pennsylvania was established by English Quakers and German Pietists who wanted to practice their faiths with limited interference from European governments.

Other colonies were not established by the British at all, but were captured by them. New York and New Jersey, for instance, were started by the Dutch as trading ventures, but were eventually captured by the British in war. Both of those colonies continued to be trading centers under British rule (and they remain great centers of economic trade even today).